Chris Lombardi puts defense and security under the spotlight, as he shares his takes on recent NATO and EU cooperation and provides insight into the company’s own long-term strategic partnerships in Europe.

Three trends are currently driving the global electricity sector: decarbonization, decentralization and differentiation. Utilities are making significant contributions to mitigate carbon emissions, while a technology revolution is …

Most papers focus on personal attacks launched this week by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. The socialist candidate lashed out at President Jacques Chirac, calling him “tired, ageing, worn down and passive”.

Le Monde reports that Chirac quite energetically surrounded himself with advisers in order to cook up a riposte, which amounted to attacking the politics of la gauche and dismissing Jospin’s accusation as “un délit de sale gueule”.

That translates literally as “an offence of [having] a filthy mouth” but really means something like “you can’t judge a book by its tired, ageing, worn down cover”.

Even socialist allies were shocked enough to suggest Jospin should have his gueule washed out with savon de Marseille. “This is not a strategy to use jibes or personal attacks,” insisted the prime minister’s campaign manager, Jean Glavany, in a bit of spin-control after the damage had been done.

Left-leaning Libération sums it all up quite nicely with a front-page cartoon of Chirac grabbing Jospin around the neck as the latter tries to knee the former in les coquilles St. Jacques.

Crime and punishment are also big issues. Chirac has made the war on crime his number-one priority but the feisty Libération notes that for the president – a target of corruption charges – this means “zero tolerance for everybody but me”.

Conservative Le Figaro is always looking for an angle to help out the president – even going so far as to violate an embargo by publishing damaging excerpts from a book by investigator Eric Halphen. That backfired, producing more bad publicity for Chirac, so this week the paper notes that “social discontent” has returned to the country as a result of the move to the 35-hour working week.

Truck drivers, hospital workers and bureaucrats are striking or protesting over the implementation of new socialist-devised rules. This, Le Figaro argues, gives Jospin’s opponents “another opportunity to condemn his failure to enter into a social dialogue or take sides with the demonstrators”.

American correspondents typically cover French politics with one eyebrow raised, looking on them as a sort of sociological curiosity. The New York Times weighs in with an account of a Chirac visit to a Paris suburb that devolved into a shouting and spitting match. The president, notes the Times, “had counted on his abilities as a charismatic and energetic campaigner. But there is growing feeling here that Mr Chirac may be off his game.”

The polls bear this out, with several new ones showing Jospin ahead for the first time – even if only by a statistically insignificant margin. Still, this is enough for some to predict a winner.

No less authoritative a source than Pravda has already predicted a socialist victory. ‘Jospin to win’ reads the headline in the Kremlin’s former house organ.